


oh, my love, don't forget me

by longingly



Series: the visionary & the architect [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: F/M, Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Prophetic Visions, Tumblr: FFXIVwrite, Tumblr: FFXIVwrite2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:41:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26258821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longingly/pseuds/longingly
Summary: Emet-Selch answers The Oracle's call.
Relationships: Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch/Warrior of Light
Series: the visionary & the architect [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1909951
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6
Collections: Emet-Selch's Wholesomely Debauched Bookclub FFXIV-Writes 2020 Collection





	oh, my love, don't forget me

**Author's Note:**

> title from florence + the machine
> 
> for ffxiv writes - day two - sway
> 
> [this is what the oracle looks like.](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/355632201804546052/749478583348625498/unknown.png)

The Oracle’s gaze upon him is inscrutable, her bright, two-tone eyes devoid of light.

“Emet-Selch,” she says, extending a slender hand draped in thin silver hoops adorned with gemstones, “to what do I the pleasure?” 

Her voice is flat, but that’s hardly unusual. She is curt with all, even her trusted cohorts, so he’s come not to view it as a personal offense. Instead, Emet-Selch ducks his head to kiss her fingers, one by one, lips lingering upon each of her many rings that shine bright against her midnight skin. 

“Why, I am merely answering your _call_ , my dear.” His lips curve upwards into a sliver of a trickster’s smile, golden eyes flashing in the dim of her room.

She blinks, a brief flicker of confusion passing across her stony face. “My… _call_.” 

“Yes.” In an easy, familiar motion, Emet-Selch takes a seat upon her bed. On the edge, of course; he is a gentleman, not a savage. Even an Emperor has manners. “I wouldn’t dream of appearing upon your doorstep uninvited. That would be _rude_.”

The Oracle pinches the bridge of her nose, eyes fluttering shut. The tail end of a dream slithers from her mind, its emerald tendrils seeping back into the earth beneath her. The sort of dream that does not flutter away softly, floating away until it is butterflies lost to the wind. The sort of dream that tastes like darkness, and ichor, and despair.

She wets her lips, and in her mind The Oracle continues to weave together the threads of Zodiark’s creation with her own lived experiences. With her own sights and sounds and saving done in the name of Hydaelyn. She is unsure as of yet what the tapestry of _her_ truth will reflect, but she knows that she trusts it more that the sum of its parts, even if she carries the blessing of the Light within her.

(And now, a great deal of cursed Light within her as well.)

“Intriguing,” The Oracle says, propping herself up on her elbows, the covers sliding down to expose her bare chest, revealing ilms of dark, scarred skin covered in inky tattoos. Her nipples are pierced, and she is wholly unconcerned with her modesty. “It was certainly no conscious call. If you must know, it was simply a dream I’ve had since I was a girl, one so old that it predates my ability to sculpt the words of a fortune from the clay of a vision.”

He arches a brow, pressing a gloved hand close to his breast. “Then I am honored to walk the lonely streets of such a trusted dream, Warrior of Light.”

The Oracle does not roll her eyes, or emote her displeasure in any significant manner. All the same, it simmers beneath the surface, and it is far too entertaining. For such a cold woman, the potential for a burning hate runs deep, and it is with an ancient love that he stokes the fire of it, aching to see it boil over. 

She pulls her hand from Emet-Selch’s grasp to tip his chin up with two slender fingers to turn his face towards hers. Her gaze is stern. 

“I suppose you want me to speak of it, then.”

He spreads his both of his hands in a display of surrender and then shrugs. “My name was not upon your lips, but if you would allow me the indulgence, I would request the raw nature of your vision, undistilled.”

“Very well. If only because it will cleanse me of the sour taste. This leaves bitter dregs on my tongue when I swallow it down, for it rarely is loosed into the world.” The Oracle pats her lap. “You may rest your head, if it soothes you. I care not. Some find it a comfort.”

Emet-Selch laughs at her condescension but edges closer all the same, laying on the bed in whole until he can wrap his arms around her waist and bury his face into the plush blanket that retains her modesty. 

“It has been quite some time since I’ve had a bedtime story,” he muses, and The Oracle does not reply. Her hand cards through his hair, an idle motion that is slow, rhythmic. When she speaks again her voice has slipped into a soft, soft drone. An embrace of a whisper. An adoration as she murmurs unto him a vision of her past, tumbling down into it seemingly against her will.

“It is scraps. Scrawled bits across torn, wet paper. I walk lonely streets of a lonely city in a lonely dream: bricks beneath my feet and they are crumbling, trees surround me and they wilt from my breath. Around me are the unraveled strings of robes in dappled grey; loose and amorphous, twining until we are a counsel, and we are together, and I know not our numbers and I know not if we are a we or an us or if I am myself for the little glittering pebbles of these memories turn to petals turn to rain.”

Emet-Selch’s eyes flutter closed. Her voice is familiar, now, not the sound of it but the _shape_ of it, of they who would be Unsundered, _they_ who sought the world out and _Saw_ it, but all the same he lets himself fall under the sway of her words as he drinks in these painful scattered fragments of a life once lived and a life once ended.

“There is such a great deal of rain, you see,” The Oracle murmurs, her voice aching and hushed now, and for all of his witnessing of her and hers across Norvrandt, he has never heard her voice so thick with tears. “It is so heavy, this rain, this rain that burns my flesh until it is naught but cinders.”

She leans down to press a kiss to the top of his head, curling over him, still entranced by a vision she will not recall the moment it is ended. Unlike the Echo, these do not remain. When Emet-Selch looks up, The Oracle’s face is warm, and for a second in her is his Hyperion, as though no time had passed at all. As though they were in Amaurot, as though he were listening to them spin him a tale of their Sight from their travels.

When The Oracle opens her mouth, though, out drips an offer that is poison served up with a genial, crooked smile.

“Would you like to know how I died?” Hyperion asks. “Would you like to know how it tasted with the knowledge of your betrayal heavy on my tongue?”

**Author's Note:**

> join fellow writers and readers in [the bookclub](https://discord.gg/enabling-debauched-xivfic)!!


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